We buried our newly won ivory under a tree, locating the spot exactly with the aid of Monty’s compass, and broke camp, starting sleepless up the mountain.  As Monty said: 

“No use meandering around the mountain.  Hassan might be higher up or lower down.  If he is there you may depend on it he’s tired of waiting.  He’s looking for a safari.  Let’s climb where we can be seen from miles away.”

So climb we did, thousand after thousand feet, until the night air grew so cold that the porters’ teeth chattered and they threatened to desert us.  They grew afraid, too, remembering the tales the villagers had told them down below.

“Wow!  You are not fat babies!” Kazimoto told them.  “Who would eat such stringy meat as you?”

We came to caves that none of the men dared enter—­vast, gloomy tunnels into the mountain through which the chill wind whistled like a dirge.  Yet the caverns were warmer than the wind, and not bad camping-places if we could have persuaded the boys to take advantage of them.

The earth, too, all over the mountain and the range to eastward of it was warm in spite of the wind.  In places there were warm springs bubbling from the rock, and at night and early morning a blanket of white mist that was remarkably like steam covered everything.  It was a land of thunderless lightning—­lightning from a clear sky, flashing here and there without warning or excuse.  On the high slopes there was little or no game, and no signs whatever of inhabitants, until late one afternoon the porters shouted, and we saw an old man racing toward us along the top of a ridge.

He held his hands out, and shouted as he ran—­a round-faced, big-bellied man, although not nearly so fat as when we saw him last; unclean, unkempt, in tattered shirt and crushed-in fez—­a man with one desire expressed all over him—­to see, and touch, and talk with other men.  He ran and threw himself at Monty’s feet, clasped his legs, and blubbered.

“Bwana!  Oh, bwana!  Oh, bwana!”

“Get up, Johnson!” Fred took him by the arm and raised him.  “Tell us what’s the matter.”

“Men who eat men!  Men who eat men!  I had three porters to carry my tent and food.  Now I have none.  They have eaten them!  Now they hunt me!”

“Well, you’re safe,” said Monty.  “Calm yourself.”

“But you are not Bwana Schillingschen!  I am here to wait for him.  Have you seen him?  Where is he?”

Fred answered him.  “Dead!”

Hassan threw himself on the ground again at Monty’s feet.

“Oh, what shall I do?” he blubbered.  “I am an old man.  Who shall take my people out of jail?  Who shall go to Dar es Salaam and make Germans give them up?”

“If you’re willing to show us what you intended to show
Schillingschen,” said Monty, “I’ll do what I can for your relations.”

“What can you do?  Oh, what can you do?  No man but a German can make these Germans cease from punishing!”